She became aware of the vandalism to her Renault the following morning when she took Gulliver for his walk. Carole had recently been experiencing a bit of pain in her right knee, but she wasn’t going to allow that to break her established routine. She just stopped more often on the beach while Gulliver scampered around her. Their regular journey passed the parade of shops. Her plan had been to let the dog stretch his legs on Fethering Beach, and then drive him back to High Tor, but that was before she had seen the smashed window.

Following fast on her initial reactions of shock and affront was one of shame. Carole Seddon had always felt guilty, frequently about things for which she could not possibly have had any responsibility. It was a legacy of her buttoned-up middle-class upbringing. She responded to this tendency towards self-blame by trying never to do anything that might invite censure. She was punctilious in her respect for the laws of the land and also for the more complex societal rules that obtained in a place like Fethering. Though she was not invited out much locally, when she was, she ensured that the reciprocal entertainment she offered was precisely balanced. Though she rarely engaged in conversation with acquaintances she met on her dog walks, she always gave them the minimum greeting of a ‘Fethering nod’. Any service from a neighbour, however small, was rewarded with a card of thanks. Though by nature distant and standoffish, Carole Seddon worked very hard not to appear distant and standoffish. Sadly, the outcome of these efforts was only to make her appear even more distant and standoffish.

Carole’s nirvana would have been to live in a world where she passed completely unnoticed. But in an English country village, such anonymity is unobtainable.

The shame prompted by the sight of her vandalized car bore this out. The Renault was hers. Everyone in Fethering knew that the Renault was hers. Everyone who saw the smashed rear window would, to Carole’s somewhat paranoid mind, be sniggering at her expense. They would be discussing her misfortune behind her back. That, to Carole, would be as much of a personal invasion as the vandalism itself. So, her first priority was to remove the evidence. To minimize the imagined derision from her neighbours, Carole needed to get the glass replaced as soon as possible.